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And what a show

It was like sitting in a sensory pod, a filh the emitters Only the frames, the visuals, noises, smells, and touches were all ju was impossible, yet taken as a whole he knew this was his life on display

I ht immeasurable comfort The first chip of stone off a prison wall He thinks, therefore he is Isn’t that what the philosopher said?

Good, I exist That’s a start

The erratic replay of his life ended, and real memory flooded in to fill the space left behind Meunshot wound to his neck and a deeply cut chin, a a thousand other sh a brittle roof and … and, vanished Just memory, he realized He reached up and touched his chin No pain Just stubble and irregular patches of caked blood

"You are suitable," a voice said It came from everywhere and nowhere, as if he’d said it hi else So and synthetic

"Ana," he said, voice hoarse "Ana?"

"She rests," the voice said, clear and yet epheely accented No one Skyler knew

He looked around A pointless effort and yet he found comfort in the fact that his head did not ache White stretched off in every direction as if he were inside a vast …

Bubble

Skyler stretched his hand out, felt a pressure, a bulging This is familiar This I know He pressed harder and the void see, centimeters from his body

"What did you mean? Suitable for what?"

"You are suitable"

"Can I leave?" he asked, unsure whom he spoke to

"If you’re ready"

He sed, not expecting that And, worse, realizing with a sudden crystalline clarity that the voice was the other entity in his head The one who’d been watching his life "What will I find out there? Bullets already in flight? More death?"

"A decision"

"Is that all?"

"All that runted "Will you be out there?"

"Yes"

"So you don’t matter?"

"I’th of Skyler’s body, bringing gooseflesh to his ars He shivered, and realized suddenly that he was alone in his own head again

"Are you still there?"

"Yes" Yet detached now Separate

Skyler pushed his other hand against the ht hesitation "Eve"

He waited, digesting the name He didn’t know anyone named Eve, and yet somehow he’d known she would say that As if no other naan to stretch around his hands, pushing outward

A nervous energy began to build in hi to ask what to call me?"

"I knohat to call you"

Chapter Thirty-Six

The Key Ship

2APR2285

Fear and desire propelled Skyler forward through the malleable void Desire to find Ana, or Tania, or anyone A familiar face, a real face Then a way out

Eve Of course it would be that The na hian to shake Then the bubble of white that was his world shattered and collapsed around him He fell forward on his hands to a cold floor, hard as stone

He found himself alone in a dark circular room The bubble had been perched on a raised dais in the center, and there was an exit directly in front of hi under control Quietly he stepped through into a hallway and glanced left The passage extended fortyat a T intersection He walked that way, the fe in his mind like a church bell with every step You are suitable …

At the first portal he slowed, held his breath, and leaned in to look

A doh and wide, ht of breaking it, or stepping into it, and thought better of the idea He continued down the hall, instead, and found more identical rooms

Save for one, near the end, with no white dome The dais was empty, like the one Skyler had left Ana?

He sed, continued to the T intersection at the end A soft yellowish light lit the walls froentle upward curve

Instead he saw a onal in shape The far as clear, revealing a stunning view of Earth and space The space re room where he’d encountered Neil Platz

Ten seats dotted the floor of the rooh oval Not red couches like Platz had, but sirown out of the surrounding floor

Tere occupied

Prumble sat in one, relaxed Al at Clarke’s He was talking in a low voice, his fingers dru a whopper of a story

In the other occupied chair, across frouessed Light brown hair that fell in long wavy locks over her shoulders and down to her waist She was perched on the edge of her seat, leaning forward and listening intently as Prumble spoke to her in a low, casual voice Her hands were folded in her lap, her legs crossed A graceful pose, sincere and very adult She wore a white dress that Skyler thought looked familiar

Her face was at once exotic and yet bizarrely fa-lost relative after decades apart

Skyler stepped into the rooaze when she noticed hi the reserinned broadly "There’s our man now!" He stood with an effort andhiood to see you, ed "Sorry, I’m a little … out of sorts"